As a family we love to explore, travel and eat out, A LOT! So we have decided to make a bucket list for all the things we’d like to experience this year in 2022. Most things are in Northern Ireland and some not so we are super excited to get some travelling in this year too! Our 2022 bucket list consists of:
- Cooking lessons for India
- Silly string fight
- Make ice cream from scratch
- Go to the sunflower field in Portglenone ✅
- Make homemade jam
- An epic water fight
- Family sleepover in the living room
- Visit Castle Espie ✅
- Visit Millview Fram to make our own milkshake ✅
- Take the ferry to Strangford ✅
- 4D cinema at the SSE Arena
- Go to Pizza Punkz in Belfast ✅
- Drive in Movie
- See a show/pantomime
- Visit Lisburn swimming pool
- Go to the beach to find sea glass ✅
- See Belfast Giants AGAIN!!
- Explore London (visit Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Tower of London, London Bridge and Downing Street ✅
- Make an apple pie
- Make a 3 layered cake
First thing to be ticked off is Sea Glass hunting!
Sea Glass is quite hard to find, we went to a couple of different beaches up the North Coast area as we were staying at Ballyness to find some and it was the third beach we finally did. It’s so small, you really need to have your eyes peeled! we got some beautiful pieces but we will keep on the hunt!
Making our own milkshake at Millview Farm
If you live in the North Down area of Northern Ireland then we highly recommend a visit to Millview Farm. They have the coolest way to make your own milkshake and the milk is from their very own cows on their farm! You start of by buying your 1 litre glass bottle from the glass bottle vending machine which costs £2 which you keep and it has their lovely logo on it. Next choose if you just want 1 litre of milk which costs £1 or 1 litre of milkshake which costs £1.60. There are lots of delicious flavours to choose from including chocolate, banana, strawberry, salted caramel, Mint Aero, Cream Egg, popcorn, bubblegum, white chocolate and honeycomb so there is a flavour for everyone!
We got chocolate and Cream Egg and they are both sooo delicious! The milk is so creamy and you can really taste the freshness! Next time we go we just need to take our glass bottles with us and it will only cost £1.60 BARGAIN! There is also a little section that you could visit calves, kids (baby goats, not actual children) and some roosters who kept cock a doodle doing at us, so funny!
They also have a vending machine for hot drinks, crisps and fizzy drinks and also a dessert vending machine which can have traybakes, cookies and cheesecakes in there (we will definitely be trying these out when we have less Easter eggs in the house!)
I’d say we will be making a weekly trip here as the first 2 bottles lasted only 2 days!
Take the ferry to Strangford
Taking the ferry to Strangford was so much fun! We stopped at The Quays for a bite to eat first (check it out in NI Reviews section) drove to Portaferry, parked the car and jumped on the Ferry to Strangford. It only cost £6 for the four of us return. It was surprisingly quick and it comes every 15 minutes so there isn’t much waiting around if you miss one. You can go on as a foot passenger (which is what we did) or you can drive the car or motorbike on.
Not sure if it would have been a fun experience if it was a rainy day but the sun was shining and we loved it! We then walked to Castle Ward (we really should have brought the car over as the walk from the ferry to there was so long but the scenery was beautiful). We will board the car next time and drive to Castle Ward as it’s a really big place, so beautiful though with blue bells and snow drops everywhere! We want to explore it more but that’s an adventure for another day.
Visiting the sunflower field in Portglenone
We have wanted to go and visit the sunflower fields in Portglenone for a couple of years and we’ve just never gotten around to it! Finally this summer, we were in the area so we thought LET’S GOOOO!! I (Maxwell) found the biggest sunflower in the 2 fields and brought it home (I mean I had too!) The stalk was so thick, it took me a good 3-4 minutes to get it out but I did it!
It is £3 for adults and £1.50 for us kiddies then you can buy some sunflowers and seeds at the end, oh and the car park is free. What is really cool about the sunflower field is that all the money goes to charity, woo hoo!
Visit to Castle Espie
I (India) went to Castle Espie with my BF and loved it. It’s so much fun feeding the ducks and geese, the grounds are so lovely and the walk has so many fun look out points and pretty scenery. Maxwell and I were so excited to be invited to Castle Espie for a PR trip (you can read the full blog here) and be a part of their Junior Wetlands Rangers workshop! We’ll leave you with some of the photos but check out the full blog to see more photos and a full write up of all the fun we had.
